Creationism: from the US, with love
 

From The Scientist website:

The pressure from US religious groups to unseat the teaching of evolution as the sole construct in public schools shows no sign of slowing. In Georgia, Alabama, and Pennsylvania, as well as other states, individual school districts and state governments are grappling with suggestions that creationism be taught along with evolution. And the movement appears to be a new US export.

Across the Atlantic, those in charge of Britain's education system have been facing their own version of the God versus Darwin debate, albeit on a much smaller scale. For the past three years, a small group of schools in northeast England have been at the center of the controversy about teaching creationism. The schools, established under a government scheme that allows private benefactors to operate state schools, are run by the Emmanuel Schools Foundation, which is backed by the millionaire car dealer Peter Vardy.

For its part, the foundation says on its Web site that it "encourages an academic and inquisitive approach to spiritual matters including, amongst others, creation and the origins of life on earth." In 2002, Prime Minister Tony Blair said in Parliament he was happy about creationism being taught alongside evolution in state schools. Others, such as Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins, are not so happy. Dawkins, eight other leading scientists, and six top clergy wrote to Blair in 2002, pointing out that "Evolution is not, as spokesmen for the college maintain, a 'faith position' in the same category as the biblical account of creation.... It is a scientific theory of great explanatory power, able to account for a wide range of phenomena in a number of disciplines."

"It's important to get across that respectable church men are all supporters of evolution," Dawkins told The Scientist recently.

This year, a third school run by the Emmanuel Schools Foundation, Trinity College in Doncaster, is due to open. Plans for a fourth college were abandoned late last year after vocal opposition by a group of teachers and local parents.

Meanwhile, politicians are still debating the issue. On Jan. 31, 2005, in the House of Lords, Dick Taverne, of the Liberal Democrat party, asked the government whether the national curriculum will exclude the teaching of creationism in schools. Junior education minister Geoffrey Filkin replied that the curriculum for 14- to 16-year-old students calls for the teaching of evolution, variation, and selection. "They also consider different theories on the origin of the universe," Filkin said. "In all aspects of the national curriculum, we encourage pupils to consider different ideas and beliefs, and how scientific controversies can arise from different ways of interpreting evidence. That is the core of scientific inquiry."

Taverne shot back: "Since the Government is in favor of allowing choice between sense and nonsense, will it also allow children to be taught that the earth is flat and that the sun goes around the earth? Since there is a crisis in math teaching in schools, and some university chemistry departments are closing down, will the Government also offer as an alternative the teaching of astrology and alchemy?"

"It is extraordinary," Taverne went on, "that a Government and a Prime Minister who say they are in favor of science have allowed the introduction into our schools of the worst features of American fundamentalist, antiscience, pseudoscience nonsense."

In Dawkins' view, however, the situation in the United Kingdom isn't comparable to the United States. "We're not in the same dire straights as they are over there," he says. "I don't think it's a problem yet, but one must always be vigilant."

Turning up in Australia too, can't you keep you bloody fundies on a shorter leash?

The Brits sent the religion over here first. It's really their fault, what with the persecution in the 17th century and all. Fundies are pretty much the same no matter where their seeds were planted.

Although I hear that some of the African Missionary Churches get a little more interesting when it comes to their prosteletyzing (or however the fuck you spell it), including threats of severe beatings if you don't accept Christ as your Personal Savior. I guess they want you to really understand what it means to turn the other cheek.

Part of the problem is that we have a fundie-lite running the show as well as fundies being gun rights advocates.

I'm torn, truly.

I live in an area full of that kind of church, re-imported religion from Africa, like that other nasty export from Africa, AIDs, it's a destructive beast that seems very hard to root out.

You know, I somehow doubt in India and China they'd even consider posioning their education system with this shit, no wonder we're sinking economically. Why don't we just put in lead pipes and wait for the visigoths to turn up.

You're torn? Try this one on for size ...

I have far more in common with the Christian Right than I do with most pagans.

When you go to a festival smelling of Hoppes No. 9 rather than Patchouli, folks tend to kind of sidle away from you.

The unfortunately truth is that our educational system is spending more time arguing over this shit than they are educating ...

(I also find it interesting that you are seeing slipping standards, since you've been educated everywhere but The US.)

There is no scientific controversy over whether or not magic was involved in the creation of the universe. All of the controversy is in the religious community over how much science they need to accept, and how much of their mythology should be forced on others.

So few people appreciate that special eau de fusil...

I feel your pain.

Try these. See if you can tell me where they come from.

The Price Some Reservists Have To Pay
Most of the reservists called up to serve in the Iraq war have paid a big price: a significant reduction of their wages as they transferred from civilian to military jobs, separation from their loved ones, and of course the risk of battle wounds or death. Regrettably, on their return home, those who are divorced fathers could face another grievous penalty: loss of their children, financial ruin, prosecution as "deadbeat dads," and even jail.

The Fatherphobia Of Family Courts
The threat to the right of children to be raised in mother-father homes comes not only from gay adoptions. It also comes from the fatherphobia of family courts that deprive children of their fathers.

Making Schools Accountable
Are taxpayer-subsidized infomercials and payoffs to friendly commentators the federal government's answer to education problems? The U.S. Education Department's secret million-dollar taxpayer-financed marketing campaign to sell the No Child Left Behind Act is only a symptom of what's wrong.

No Child Left Unmedicated
Big Brother is on the march. A plan to subject all children to mental health screening is underway, and the pharmaceuticals are gearing up for bigger sales of psychotropic drugs.

townhall.com was my first guess

(I googled after I established my guess, and I'm not at all surprised.)

I get them from Phyllis directly actually, but yeah, hard right.

She's been sending me her tirades for a while, but sometimes she dead on.

UK public system is fucking awful in most places. Not much better in AU, the standard needed to pass and what is considered an A has been lowered and lowered (not to mention an 40% pass level) to a point where it's no longer funny. All day you hear our 'leaders' here crapping on about the need to move to a 'knowledge based economy' (I assume tertiary is too unusual a word for TV) and gutting the edu system in the same breath. Do not get me started on Blair and his fucking '1 in 2 students must go to uni' bullshit.

Here in America we call it 'normalizing' a grading scale.

Call me normal and you better run...

Well there's that and bell curve marking so you can't see the standard slip year to year.

I don't think Creationism OR Evolutionary origins should be taught in public schools.

Why can't they leave origins out of school altogether?

You can learn how a cell works without speculating on how it first appeared on the planet. You don't have to teach origins to convert one mole of an element to another. Don't need origins to teach math.

Leave origins out of the school completely, I say.

But if you insist on teaching evolutionary origins, then give it equal time with Creationism, AND the Hindi Origin theories, AND the Pagan theories, too.

Excellent point. Excellent suggestion. I never even thought to ask that question.

They don't teach about what happened before the Big Bang, because that's the point before which supported theory becomes idle speculation. So you could say that origins ARE left out, at the point where they cease to be science.

To make creationists happy, we'd have to leave everything out of the science book that takes more than a few thousand years.

Because you can still teach evolution while leaving out origins, that's why.

The fundies would pop a blood vessel if that compromise ever made it through.

Exactly. You can't say light from a star six billion light-years away is six billion years old, you can't say that the rock strata in the Grand Canyon shows tens of thousands of years of layers, you can't say the sea-floor shows that the Earth's polarity has switched several times over the last million years... It's not just origins of life, it's a strict time-limit on everything.

Next they'll be calling on toy stores to stop carrying dino toys, they are clearly an tool of the evil liberal evo-fascist conspiricy.

No, dinosaurs were obviously dragons!

You can teach mutation and speciation without origins, yes.

Well, that's true. It's mostly about origin of life, but you're right, it has it's theoretical little threads throughout real science.

Even though it's been scientifically proven that striations in the ground in grand canyon like formations can be made in as little as 20 years (and the rocks made therein are dated as "millions of years old". Whatever.

But that's a different thread. ;)


And BTW...Creationists believe in dinosaurs.... :)

Ye gods it gets worse. Sometimes I wonder if we'll see a new gallileo my lifetime. At this rate you have to wonder.

Of course you can make a striation of dirt in 20 years What takes a long time is for it to become stone.

FWIW, I attended Seattle Pacific University to get my computer science degree. This is a Methodist university that requires a bible course (OT or NT) to graduate. I took the OT course by Hobson's choice.

The professor (a doctor in theology) flatly stated that the OT cannot be treated as a history book. The OT, in his words, is "useful for instruction".

Which are part of evolution, and thus evolution is being taught and the hopping fundies won't stand still for it.

We've already established the biblical scale gullibility of creationists. Do we really need to cover that ground again?

RE should cover things like:

- How and why religion causes major sects of the world's population to blow each others arms off
- How one man's storybook changed the world
- Why it is ok for a religion to be contradictory if it suits ones aims
- Why Christianity through Calvinsim formed Capitalism that would overtake the Western World at the expense of, well, the rest of the world
- Why one should help thy neighbour but not thy too far away or different coloured neighbours
- Einstein vs Jesus: Einstein discovered something that was there anyway. Some reports, widely mistranslated, say that Jesus made water into wine. Why Jesus wins.

Maybe we should stop teaching children biology and science altogether....just tell them a bunch of parables and let them work out their own understanding of the world.....in fact maybe we should ditch modern medicine as well while we're at it and revert to the Four Humours. I hear there are some doctors doing some wonderful work with leeches and mercury

(cracks the door to this thread, peeks in, then slams it with a shriek of fear)
:eek:

That's right, didn't Samson kill someone with the jawbone of a triceratops? :p

I watched a program caled "When the sacred cows and religion meet" Gorge v. Coyne the director of the Vatican observatory discussed in lenght the universe and evolution from a scientific stance. He is a scientist. At the end of his lecture, he said he believed in God. He stated that God did not create human life out of necesity but by choice. This was after going to great lenght to describe the universe as being billions of years old. At the end of his lecture, he was asked how could he believe in God. He stated, and I'm paraphrasing. If I could explain my faith in God, I would explain something other than God. I do not understand. Everytime God is mentioned, he is father away. We cannot explain human existance. "God defys explanation." The point being, creationism has no scientfic evidence, where there is proof of evolution. In my opinion creationism is a religious belief. If a scientist states his beliefs are based on faith, with nothing to back it up, how can it be taught as a theory of human existance? I feel we need to stick with what has been proven to a certain degree. I have nothing against those that believe in creationism. However, I believe religion and creationism are closely tied.
Look at countries, such as Iran who are ruled by a religious sect; leave anything related to a certain religion out of our schools.